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How electromagnetic therapy inspired me
Poet Sarah James explores how repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treated her depression and influenced her art.
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Sharing Nature: Over the rainbow
Here’s your choice of the most meaningful nature photo on the theme of health.
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Lovesickness and ‘The Love Thief’
An 11th-century poem of love, lust and possibly gruesome death still resonates today.
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Black pepper to fuel fiery fights and cure haemorrhoids
This common condiment was once very valuable and, until surprisingly recently, used as a versatile medicine.
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The power of unicorns
Discover the unlikely connection between pharmaceuticals and unicorns.
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Divining the world through an artist’s almanac
Amanda Couch's artists book, 'Huwawa in the Everyday: an almanac' is inspired by the entrail like folds of a medieval folding and its function as a guide for astrological divinations linking the body, health and the heavens. Like the original almanac her work is designed to be carried out into the wider world.
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A head apart from the body
We look to the future of science via science fiction to explore how a head may live apart from its body.
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This is what changed my approach to interior design
An interior designer examines how emotions and cognitive activity influenced her designs, and argues that spaces reflect the people within.
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A brief history of tattoos
The earliest evidence of tattoo art dates from 5000 BC, and the practice continues to hold meaning for many cultures around the world.
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Louis Wain’s cryptic cats
Once famous for his quirky cat illustrations, today Louis Wain is often portrayed as a ‘psychotic’ artist whose illness can be mapped out through his drawings. Here Bryony Benge-Abbott takes a more rounded view.
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The painter, the psychiatrist and a fashion for hysteria
A dramatic painting brings a famous event in medical history alive. But it also tells a tale about the health preoccupations of the time.
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Meet the climate emergency
Find out what led Yinka Shonibare to create the compelling artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’.
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Notes upon arrival
In an effort to feel at home back in the country of her birth, poet Bhanu Kapil recognises the small revelations of nature in a chilly UK spring as a way to reconnect.
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Bringing biotech to the people
Amateur scientists have inspired all kinds of frightening scenarios, from Frankenstein’s monster to ‘The Fly’ and ‘Breaking Bad’. But it can be a force for good. Today’s DIYbio enthusiasts are having fun – and even making lucrative breakthrough discoveries.
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Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies
Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.
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Dial ‘S’ for sex
In pre-internet days, phone boxes became a patchwork of ‘tart cards’ offering sexual services. Find out about the clandestine world they hint at.
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Can isolation lead to manipulation?
Military-funded researchers wanted to know if isolation techniques could facilitate brainwashing. One neuroscientist suggested that it might improve our own control over our minds.
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Transforming the decorative into dissent
Discover how embroidered messages by two ‘troublesome’ women in 19th-century asylums are mirrored in the therapeutic quilting work of writer Rachel May.
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How to talk to kids about race
When her daughter decided blonde was best, a red flag went up for Pragya Agarwal. In this essay, the behavioural scientist discusses childhood development, race and representation.
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Ancestry, privacy and the family tree
Wanting to find out more about her Jamaican grandfather, Tanya Perdikou contemplates DNA testing. But first she has to consider the potential impact of unexpected results.
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How my wheelchair changed my life
A young woman diagnosed with a disabling condition found her world shrank without the mobility aids she needed to get outside. Finally facing the stigma around using a wheelchair transformed her everyday life.
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The building as tool of healing
When we’re ill, it’s not just medical care that helps to treat us. Architects have discovered that the right environment can play an important part too.
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Homes for the hives of industry
By building workers’ villages, industry titans demonstrated both philanthropy and control. Employees’ health improved, while rulebooks told them how to live ideal lives.
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Why the 1918 Spanish flu defied both memory and imagination
The Black Death, AIDS and Ebola outbreaks are part of our collective cultural memory, but the Spanish flu outbreak has not been.
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How do advertisers get inside our heads?
Vance Packard exposed techniques of mass manipulation developed by 1950s advertisers that are still at work today in the age of big data.